


I Only Wanna Be A Relief

by flowersandteeth



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - No Superheroes, Angst, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Porn, Blow Jobs, Drunken Kissing, Fluff and Angst, Fluff and Smut, Frottage, Hand Jobs, Howard Stark's A+ Parenting, Hurt Tony Stark, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kissing, M/M, Mildly Dubious Consent, Not Canon Compliant, Not Captain America: The First Avenger Compliant, One Shot, POV Steve Rogers, Post-Serum Steve Rogers, Smut, Tony Stark Has Issues, Tony Stark Needs a Hug, Tony Stark is not Iron Man, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-08
Updated: 2019-08-15
Packaged: 2020-08-13 04:47:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 4,118
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20168386
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flowersandteeth/pseuds/flowersandteeth
Summary: Howard's son has a bruise on his face.It's mostly faded, a faint yellowing smear near his cheekbone and blending up onto his brow, with a shrunken purple-black patch near the inner corner of the kid's eye. Steve's had his share of bruises; he knows the aftermath of a fist to the eye socket.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Story takes place in 2018.
> 
> Background:  
AU-No more heroes - Steve was Captain America in the 40's, went into the ice in 1945. Tony's grandfather was the one who knew him, Howard grew up on the stories, and he was the one who found Steve, got him pulled from the ice in 2008. Steve stayed in distant contact with Howard during his near decade in the modern age, returned when Howard and Maria passed in a car accident. 
> 
> This fell out of my brain today, all in one sitting, while I've been at work.
> 
> Song I wrote this to: Should Have Known Better by Sufjan Stevens
> 
> Hope you enjoy! <3
> 
> (Edit: my math was so wrong on the year 😂 '99 to 2018 is definitely 19 years. Steve came out of the ice in 2008, ten years before the story begins. Whoops)

Howard's son has a bruise on his face.

It's mostly faded, a faint yellowing smear near his cheekbone and blending up onto his brow, with a shrunken purple-black patch near the inner corner of the kid's eye. Steve's had his share of bruises; he knows the aftermath of a fist to the eye socket.

The expression under the bruise, those dark eyes staring, curiously blank, at Howard's casket, tell Steve where it came from. He wishes he was surprised.

He remembers meeting Tony, how he'd been a little small for his age, big eyes too intelligent and too worn out for a nine-year-old. 

Steve doesn't approach him. 

Just stares at the now nineteen-year-old orphan, who stands at the front of the church hall with his hands hidden in the pockets of his black pants, still looking much older than he should.

*

After the service and the burial, the wake drags into the evening until the high-society mourners vacate the Stark Estate. They pack into their valet-parked cars and go back to their lives, leaving nothing but silence in the ballroom.

Steve wanders upstairs, through the empty mansion, glancing through open doors. He meanders down a particularly cold hallway towards a door that's been flung wide open, and on a balcony extending off what has to be one of Maria's rooms, he finds Tony Stark. 

The space he crosses to get to the balcony would've been cozy in the light of day; shelves and shelves of books line the pale walls, and a comfortable-looking armchair sits in one corner, beside a dark wood table and a Tiffany lamp. There's a book on the table, a bookmark peeking from the pages. It's a room that had been loved. Steve pads quietly past all of it, across the plush carpet to the open glass doors.

A mess of dark hair pokes above the back of one of the two cushioned wicker chairs placed outside. Steve steps out, stands between the two pieces of patio furniture, and stares out at the sky above the property. It's all dark velvet, hung with a mostly full moon and a sprinkle of stars.

"If you're looking to reminisce, look somewhere else."

Tony's sitting, legs splayed, one hand around the neck of the unopened bottle of scotch balanced on his right thigh. He's staring at the bottle, jaw tight.

"Just out here for the quiet," Steve says.

The younger man scoffs. "Yeah, okay."

Steve doesn't respond. 

December weather's not kind, and there're no clouds to insulate what little warmth there might've been. He thinks about offering his jacket; it's not overly thick, but Tony's only wearing the suit he wore to the funeral, and Steve's coat's thicker than that thing is, for sure. He doesn't offer, though, only because he's also sure the kid will reject it on principle. 

The silence drags for a few minutes, and then Steve moves to the other cushioned chair, sitting at the edge and leaning forward, elbows on his knees.

"You gonna drink that or just stare at it?" he asks into the air between them. 

After another beat of silence, he hears the pop of the stopper being pulled. He looks over in time to see lip of the bottle touch Tony's mouth.

The kid tilts his head back, takes a deep, confident swig, his throat bobbing, before he lowers the bottle and finally looks over at Steve.

"Contributing to the delinquency of a minor doesn't really fit the narrative, Cap." Tony's eyes are dark and shiny in the moonlight, framed by lashes so thick it looks like he's wearing eyeliner.

Steve smirks a little. "You handled that real well for your very first drink."

He's gratified when Tony actually smirks back. The kid hesitates, then holds out the bottle.

"Might as well go all the way," he says.

Steve's not oblivious to the flirtatious undercurrent, sees the way Tony's eyes skate appreciatively over his face and lower, but he lets it roll.

"Might as well," he replies.

*

An hour or so later, the bottle's on the ground between the chairs, stopper back in, about a third lighter. They've mutually forgotten it, but Steve's discovered he prefers the bite of scotch when he's tasting it on Tony's lips, anyway, and from the skilled, exploring tongue that slides into his mouth to tangle with his own. 

The kid's a whirlwind, clutching and pulling in a maelstrom of anger and need and pain--so much pain--but he's a devil, too. He rocks down into Steve's lap with a precise, liquid flow that has Steve gripping his hips, digging his fingers in and hoping Tony won't mind the bruises that will definitely be there in the morning. 

This isn't a good idea. There aren't even good intentions to pave this path to hell, but Steve's walking it anyway, pulling Tony's plush lower lip between his teeth, sucking gently and then swallowing the ragged gasp he gets for his trouble in another kiss. He grips the hair at the nape of Tony's neck, pulls the kid's head back while he uses his free hand to push the collar of the white dress shirt out of the way, and applies himself to leaving marks up the smooth olive column of his throat while Tony loses his rhythm, the kid moaning as his hips stutter where he's been pushing their mutual arousal to greater heights.

"Fuck, _Captain_\--"

"That's right," Steve murmurs into his ear, grinning breathlessly when Tony shivers against him, "say it again, sweetheart," and Tony obliges at a higher pitch when Steve bites down particularly hard at the junction of the teen's neck and shoulder.

If he were the man he knows Howard's father made him out to be, who Howard obviously made him out to be, Steve wouldn't be doing this. He would've sat down, tried to coax the bottle out of Tony's hands, maybe given some speech about growing from hurt and being the person you know you can be even in the face of adversity. Something banal about overcoming and moving forward.

But he's not that man anymore. He wasn't even really that person when Howard Sr. had known him. Steve Rogers is just a man, a man displaced in time, a relic who's been wandering through this modern age for the last decade just...existing.

The world had ceased to need him or anyone like him a long time ago, way before he was pulled out of the ice, and this amazing disaster is the first moment of purpose, of _life_, that he's felt in way too long--and even though it's fueled by expensive scotch and desperation, he's selfishly clinging to it, burying himself in it. He's leaving marks on Tony that aren't made by a fist, taking the brunt of the kid's pain and giving something back that only hurts in ways that can be enjoyed.

Freeing them from the confines of their dress pants, Steve wraps a hand around both of them and strokes to a soundtrack made up of the litany of filth that falls from Tony's kiss-bitten lips, runs his thumb over the head of Tony's erection to see how wet he can get him. Steve's always been one to get wet pretty quick, but Tony leaks like a faucet when Steve toys with his slit, and Steve wants suddenly and terribly to push Tony onto his back and take him into his mouth, run his tongue through all that slick, but they're both too close.

Tony cums first, jerks and spills over both of them and Steve's hand. Steve uses the hand he still has twisted tight in the kid's hair to drag him into a rough kiss, picking up the pace until he's grunting into Tony's mouth and arching his hips up helplessly to grind his way through his own orgasm.

As he slumps back down, he pulls back just enough to give Tony and himself room to catch their respective breath. He begins easing the younger man down with soft, progressively shorter kisses, cards fingers through that dark, messy hair and up and down the kid's spine until Tony drops his forehead to Steve's shoulder and just breathes.

Past the back of Tony's slumped form, Steve watches his breath turn to steam in the near frigid air. He runs hot because of the serum, so he thinks it's probably okay to sit out here for a little while longer, to take a few more minutes before he gets Tony inside, cleaned up and in a room, a bed. Somewhere warm.


	2. Be My Rest, Be My Fantasy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> More porn, also written at work. lolol  
I'm not sure how long this is going to be, now, but I'm really feeling it, so....
> 
> Enjoy <3

"Let's go somewhere."

The words drift to Steve across the pillow they share, a whisper that's hardly a sound at all, but Tony's laying so close to him it'd be perfectly audible even if he didn't have enhanced hearing.

"Where'd you have in mind?" he whispers back, running his knuckles back and forth low across the kid's bare stomach under the covers.

Tony hums. "Anywhere. Nowhere. Far away."

They've been laying like this for hours, drifting in and out of sleep. Steve's facing both Tony and the window across the room, so he gets to watch the way the sky outside is just barely beginning to lighten with the sunrise. The sheets around them still smell mostly crisp and unused, like starch and lightly scented laundry soap, generic; like they're already in a hotel room in some distant, unfamiliar place. Steve wonders how many rooms in the mansion feel like this, have maybe felt like this Tony's entire life.

"That's a lot of wiggle room."

"What can I say," Tony murmurs, voice rough from sleep, "I'm easy."

Steve just huffs a laugh and slides his hand up the center of Tony's chest, holds back from leaning in and licking a lazy path along the kid's collarbones.

He may not be the pinnacle of moral decision-making, but Steve's not looking to pile any more trauma onto the youngest Stark. Everything that had happened on the balcony had been exciting as hell, but now that he's not swept up in the (actually kind of terrible) spontaneity, Steve wants--needs--to be sure that Tony knows he can take the lead.

Tony Stark may be, well, Tony Stark, but he's still a nineteen-year-old who just lost his parents, who less than twenty four hours earlier had been in attendance at their funeral. Who still has the echo of violence perpetrated by a dead man smeared across his face, and maybe doesn't need a jaded ex-super soldier taking any more advantage of his vulnerability.

Reaching up, Steve gently traces the outline of the bruise.

Tension leaches into Tony's features, sleep clearing from the kid's eyes as he stares solidly back at Steve.

"I'm not going to talk about it," Tony says flatly.

"I'm not going to take that choice away from you," Steve replies, and the flash of surprise he gets in return is heartbreaking.

When Tony doesn't say anything back, Steve cups the side of the kid's jaw in his palm, strokes his cheek with a thumb, and presses a kiss to his forehead. Tony hums again, and when Steve pulls back, the teen tilts his head and captures his lips in a slow but heated kiss. 

The last time Steve shared a bed out of more than necessity or convenience was before his plunge into the Arctic, when he'd been tentatively exploring (and then not so tentatively experimenting with) the burgeoning, forbidden feelings and desires he had for the most important person in his life.

James Buchanan Barnes had been his anchor, his certainty, the one constant in his life through sickness and war and the creation of Captain America, and boy, did that man know how to take Steve apart. Loving and unhurried. Rough and possessive. With humor, frequently; because they might've been lovers, but first and foremost they were friends, and Bucky had never shied from pushing Steve's buttons in any situation.

Bucky is long gone, and most of the encounters Steve's had since waking in the modern world have been hollow and short, and he never allowed the intimacy of a bed, or an overnight stay. 

Lying beside Tony is not empty like it's been with others, and though it isn't the same as being with Bucky--couldn't be--Steve's able to push the brief flicker of faded pain back into the recesses of his mind as he lets the younger man push him onto his back.

Tony breaks the kiss and slides down Steve's body. The soldier briefly considers stopping him, pulling him back up to chest-level, assuring him he doesn't have to do that, but there's no hesitance. Just dark brown eyes staring up at him as the nineteen year old trails soft pecks and flicks of his tongue down Steve's sternum and onto his stomach. Steve groans and balls his fists in the sheets when a wet kiss presses just under the head of his mostly-hard cock, and Tony smirks before taking Steve into his mouth.

It's enthusiastic and talented and purposefully sloppy, and Steve might actually be dying a little bit. He's certainly struggling with keeping his hips from thrusting up and his hands out of Tony's hair; doesn't want to choke him. 

After a few minutes, Tony pulls off with a slow, slick pop and arches that bruised brow at him.

"I'm not made of glass, Cap," he says.

Steve props himself up on his elbows.

The teasing isn't what hits Steve (even though he's definitely a sucker for it), it's the mostly concealed non-sexual frustration behind the words. Tony's staring up at him almost defiantly, lips red and swollen and shiny, a flush high on his cheeks, and it's a little wrong that it gets Steve going as much as it makes him want to curl himself around the brunet and take away all the things that've been done to him.

He smiles a little sadly.

"I know you're not," he says.

Stark men are made of iron, Steve remembers; but he'd never seen anything half as strong from Howard (senior or junior) as he does from Tony, the careful hope hidden behind the wariness and fight in the kid's eyes. If Steve can do something, anything, to keep that final flickering light from disappearing, then maybe he'll have finally done something worthwhile since his 'resurrection'.

Shifting his weight onto one arm, he reaches up with the other to brush dark hair back off the younger man's forehead. The motion is gentle at first, but when he pushes his fingers back to the crown of the teen's head, he makes a fist in the soft locks, tightens until Tony gasps. Steve's cock jumps at the rush of breath that washes over the saliva-slicked length.

"You're gorgeous like this," Steve says, "I bet you'll look just as good with my cock in your throat." He punctuates the words with a short tug and an arch of his hips, pressing his solid length against Tony's cheek, holds the teen's face there for a moment, and Tony outright moans.

After a gasped 'please' from the younger, the blowjob continues, but this time Steve does a lot more by way of 'active participation'. He's still taking it a little slowly--retaining that peaceful morning lax feeling; touches Tony's face and runs his fingers through the teen's hair, tells him how beautiful he looks (because he does, letting himself fall apart like he is, giving himself up like this in the early morning light that's beginning to shine through the guest room window)--but every once in a while, he holds Tony's head down, makes him take it, and knows he's doing something right by the perverse mix of lust and gratitude in the watering eyes that gaze back up at him.

He cums down Tony's convulsing throat, and then pulls the breathless nineteen-year-old further up the mattress and urges him onto his back. Kisses his face and throat and murmurs praise into his skin until Steve feels Tony pulse in his grip, and then the warmth of his release.

After he's cleaned them both up, they lay facing each other again, sheets pooled down at their waists. Over Tony's shoulder, Steve can see the way sky's much brighter, pink and orange with the sunrise. He feels light, more so than he has in a long time, and he has no idea how long this will last, how long until Tony loses interest or their mutual damage is too much to handle, but this...this is enough.

He looks Tony in the eye, cards fingers through his hair and smiles at him. 

"Let's go somewhere," he says.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There'll be more angst soon enough, my pretties.


	3. I Should've Wrote a Letter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> These.  
Guys.  
UGH.

They don't go somewhere, nowhere, far away.

Tony's uncle--or godfather--Howard's friend, cuts away the last vestiges of the early morning illusion. Shows up at the estate to sweep Tony away to reality, to the company he now owns, and Tony goes.

There's not much fanfare, hardly a real goodbye beyond a final, tense look from Tony before it all slips behind a mask. Steve wasn't really expecting anything more, so he's not as disappointed as he might've been.

It still hurts, though.

*

Everything is the same as before.

Steve still goes to the gym, runs laps around the park, goes to the movie theater by himself. Sits on his porch and sketches.

For a time, the sketches are of dark eyes and messy dark hair. Sometimes soft and laid out against pristine white sheets, and sometimes framed by a backdrop of velvet night sky.

After a while, he goes back to sketching other things.

*

The next time he sees Tony is on a tabloid magazine cover. The kid's got arms around two pretty girls, head tilted towards one of them, a smirk on those perfect lips. He's wearing sunglasses.

Steve's glad they didn't get Tony's eyes. He doesn't think Tony would deserve to have his soul laid bare in that way.

He doesn't sketch him anymore, but he still dreams about those gorgeous eyes gazing back at him, warm and heavy-lidded, Tony smiling when Steve returns his words.

_"Let's go somewhere."_

*

*

*

Steve's not sure why he's here.

He knows why he showed up; the elite like to see the living museum, the History Channel in HD, so real you can touch it. But he's not sure why he's staying.

Everything in him is screaming for him to leave, to go, to get out. He doesn't want to be in this claustrophobic ballroom with these people who see him as nothing but decoration, a conversation piece for the guests to comment on while the host simpers on about their connections.

After making a polite exit, the expected "Ma'am" and "Sir" and "Excuse me a moment", Steve breaks away and disappears down an empty hall, takes an elevator to the highest floor.

The roof access door is locked, but not with a mechanism that can withstand a determined (distressed) super soldier.

As evening spring air washes over him, through him, he stands at the center of the roof, closes his eyes and pulls off his jacket. Drops the expensive blue thing at his feet.

Steve's lying to himself. He knows exactly why he's still here. But the reason never showed up, even to his own party in his own tower.

Eventually, Steve gathers his jacket, takes the elevator down to the garage, and slips away unnoticed.

*

*

*

*

Three months after that party, five months after Howard and Maria's funeral, Tony shows up on Steve's porch.

It's late, the sun almost completely dipped below the horizon, the late-spring day fading into a balmy late-spring night. The kid looks ragged under his rumpled but expensive suit, bags under his slightly bloodshot eyes, and there's a fresh looking bruise across his temple. It's on the side opposite the one Howard had left. But Obadiah Stane had been Howard's right-hand man, after all.

"Hey, Cap," Tony says, his smirk falling flat, "Long time, no see."

Steve just holds the door open wider and gestures with a nod for him to come inside.

*

Tony wants to pretend he's fine.

Howard's son has another bruise on his face, and Steve wasn't there to stop it, again. This time, he could've been. He doesn't say that to Tony, but he gets the feeling he doesn't have to when Tony sighs.

"I'm fine, Cap. I've had worse than this from randos at the club."

Those dark eyes stare up at him from imploring Steve to just let it go.

Steve doesn't mention it, but he doesn't let it go.

*

They end up sitting in the kitchen, Tony at a stool at the island, staring down into the mug of coffee clasped in his hands. Steve leans back against the counter top across the kitchen, his own mug forgotten beside him as he stares at his unexpected guest.

Talking isn't a thing Tony seems to want to do, and it's oddly comforting. Like there's at least one thing hasn't changed in the last five months. It makes Steve think about that night they'd shared, and he wonders if Tony would feel different under his hands.

Abandoning his mug on the counter, Steve circles around the kitchen island until he's close enough to feel Tony's body heat.

"You gonna drink that or just stare at it?"

Tony looks up at him, eyes red-rimmed and a little damp. He doesn't say anything.

Steve wraps an arm around his shoulders, pulls the kid against his middle, reaches up with his other hand to card fingers through slightly dirty hair, and just holds him. He doesn't mention the damp warmth spreading through his t-shirt.

After a few minutes, he scritches lightly at Tony's scalp.

"Let's get you cleaned up, huh?"

*

With his royalties from the Captain America merch and the ridiculous amount of money from the federal government for his time in the ice, Steve was kind of rolling in it. He could afford to live in the main city, but he preferred his small house on his big acreage, only splurged on a few creature comforts.

He feels Tony's quiet groan rumble through his back and into Steve's chest as the shower spray pounds down against his front. Steve smirks as he lazily drags the soaped loofa over Tony's pecs and down his stomach, watches over the teen's shoulder as the soap sluices down over his abs and thighs and around the base of that steadily hardening cock.

The care-taking feeds something in Steve that's been starving for months (for years, if he was honest with himself), and he'd call it wholesome if the kid's submission wasn't so much of a turn-on. 

Tony stands obedient and pliant, the only tension coming from the obvious physical desire. Steve washes him, shampoos his hair and cleans him carefully, eventually abandons the loofa in favor of massaging with his bare hands, digging fingers and thumbs into muscles in the nineteen-year-old's back and shoulders, his hips and down his legs.

After cleaning himself (he doesn't need much, he'd already showered a couple hours before Tony had showed up) and rinsing them both, he wraps Tony in a towel and walks him into the bedroom, where Steve proceeds to towel dry him completely.

By the end, Tony's gazing down at him with that heavy-lidded expression from Steve's dreams, and when the kid pushes a hand into Steve's hair where he's kneeling, Steve just leans in and presses a kiss against his stomach, nuzzles lower at the junction of his hip and thigh before pressing a kiss to the hot, solid base of Tony's cock. The sigh he gets in return burns through him, and he runs the flat of his tongue up the cut of the nearest hipbone.

"Tease," Tony accuses breathlessly, his hand tightening in Steve's hair.

"Tell me what you want," Steve says, running his hands up the backs of Tony's thighs, curving his fingers inwards towards the cleft of his ass as he presses another kiss low on that flat stomach.

Suddenly the air seems heavier, Tony's gaze sharper and almost pleading. This is not only about sex anymore, and Steve's pulse jumps, a flash of that ache he'd felt at Tony's leaving resurfacing. The look on Tony's face is personal, is honest, and the idea of losing this again almost makes Steve pull away.

"I want you to fuck me," Tony says, his intelligent eyes almost frantic as they switch back and forth between Steve's, searching, begging.

Steve groans and wraps his arms around Tony's lower back and pulls him in tight until there's no space between their bodies. He kisses the center of the kid's chest and looks up at him.

"I'd love to."


End file.
